A typical question on Tennessee Williams, for example, would be:
"This play about a faded Southern belle was musically parodied in a Simpsons episode with Marge as the leading lady." (Streetcar Named Desire)
"This American playwright wrote Streetcar Named Desire." (Tennessee Williams)
"This other Williams work features Brick, an alcoholic and his wife Maggie." (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
So the pattern for authors is traditionally (Most Notable Work), (Author Name), (Secondary Work). This leads to an overblown value being given to knowing the "second-best" book of notable authors. Nowhere is this more apparent then with Herman Melville. The renowned writer of Moby Dick, a book I happen to despise, he mostly focused on poetry for the remainder of his career, except for one unpolished work that was not found until decades after his death - Billy Budd. This being his only other truly notable work, it is frequently used in trivia questions as the final follow-up, thus leading me to have to read not one, but two of Melville's works. My experience with Moby Dick was harrowing, to put it lightly. It still stands as my least favourite of any of my reading list books, and I fully admit to having skipped a few of the obscene number of chapters. So I was pleasantly surprised when Billy Budd managed to dispense with many of the things I hated about it. It no longer had the nautical drivel I despised, it had many fewer tangents - nothing on the colour white or the different kinds of mastheads - and it was a character piece, something I always enjoy. For book report purposes: Billy Budd is an Adam-alike who is just a great guy in every way. This infuriates the pale-skinned, jet-black hair, purple-eyed "serpent" John Claggart, who goes to intellectual Captain "Starry" Vere and claims that Billy is behind an attempted mutiny. When accused, Billy's childhood speech impediment comes back in full, and in a panic he strikes Claggart, who dies with one blow. A martial court is brought to order, and Billy is then put to death, because although they know he is pure and innocent, martial law must not take intent into account. Sad sad sappy boohoo.
Now Billy Budd was unfinished at Melville's death, or at least unpolished. It was put into a box and left there for decades until the "Melville Revival" in the 1920's renewed interest in his works. A biographer found the manuscript, and piecing together various illegible scraps and different numbering schemes, published the book under the name Billy Budd: Foretopman. This first edition was a best seller for a couple decades, when a scholar went and reworked the manuscripts and came up with a more scholarly, polished work, using the first edition and the original pieces. This edition, by F Barron Freeman, is the edition that I read. It was the accepted edition for another 20 years when two scholars, armed with new technology, rewrote the entire book using the original manuscripts and discovered not a few small discrepancies. For one thing, the title of the book was actually meant to be Billy Budd: Sailor, and the ship's name was supposed to be the Bellipotent, not the Indomitable, as the first two editions stated. So, the edition I read was not the correct one, but still more polished than the original, and the sheer quantity of editor's notes showed just how much work there was left to be done when Melville passed away. But even as an unfinished, incorrect, mangled piece of writing, I still infinitely prefer it to Moby Dick.
5/10
